Belgian boy heads off to university aged 8

A Belgian boy graduated secondary school aged eight after finishing six years of studies in just a year and a half. Laurent Simons has an IQ of 145 according to his parents, and collected a diploma with a class of 18-year-olds.

With a Belgian father and Dutch mother, his father said his son had struggled playing with children early on, and showed no real interest in toys. Laurent infact says his favourite subject is maths “because it’s so vast, there’s statistics, geometry, algebra“. After a two-month holiday from school, he will start university.

Laurent has said he consideres becoming a surgeon or an astronaut, but is currently thinking about going into computers.

“If he decided tomorrow to become a carpenter, that would not be a problem for us, as long as he is happy,” his father said.